Wolf at the Door

chapter Fifty



“Is your husband still—”

“On Sofa Sentry? He told me your Edward called it that. I love it. It’s perfect. And yeah, bet your ass he is.”

Your Edward. Rachael liked the sound of that. Lots. She lifted a hand to wave at Call Me Jim, who had just now come onto the porch. Edward was stretched out on the sofa, his head in her lap, reading the few clippings that covered the murders, which, to the public, had stopped as mysteriously and seemingly motive-free as they had begun. Given that Cain had been walking and talking (and lying, and killing) just a couple hours ago made this peaceful scene sort of reek unreality. But she wasn’t going to question it.

“Listen, Betsy, I just have to know—”

“It couldn’t wait for two hours from now?”

“If I have to suck down one more smoothie I’m going to vomit raspberries for the better part of the week. Enough with the smoothies. You will not see me during Smoothie Time tonight. What I’ve been wondering about is that damned newsletter.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. This all started because you put your address in a newsletter, which you then mailed to strangers all over the country.”

The queen laughed. “You make it sound like a bad thing.”

“I’d hoped I was making it sound like a thing I didn’t understand.”

“Yeah, I get that. You know I haven’t been the queen very long, right?”

“I might have heard a few things.”

“Mmmm. The CliffsNotes version is, I had to indirectly kill the last idiot who thought he was royalty of the undead. Which sent up a huge red flag to pretty much anyone worried about a vitamin D deficiency. There’s a new queen in town, watch out! Holy shit, what are we gonna do? Like that, right?

“My husband wanted to hide in plain sight, behind a . . . what weirdo way did he describe—oh! Hide behind a shield of fear and intimidation. Like when Walmart brings out the lawyers. That’s what he wanted to do, and I came to see the sense of it.

“Because let’s face it . . . once I created a vacancy and immediately (yet reluctantly) filled it, someone was always going to be coming after me. F*cking always. It was totally inevitable. We could have bet our lives on it. We did bet our lives on it, come to think of it. So, knowing that, accepting that, we put our contact info right out there. There was nothing we could have done to prevent someone from gunning for us. But we could do plenty about how the regime change was perceived. So! A newsletter. Hi, I’m Betsy, glad to be part of the team, looking forward to meeting you, come on by anytime, blahblah-blah.”

“Sending the message that you in your new role are so powerful, you don’t care if other vampires can find you.” Rachael had to admire the audacity. If someone killed her cousin to run the Pack, and made a point of being extremely findable afterward, she knew she would instantly rethink strategy. She would assume the new guy wanted to be found, was making a point of it, which made the whole thing smell like a trap. “In fact, you want other vampires to find you. To pay homage or just acknowledge your sovereignty and . . . and . . . what do they do?”

“Drop off bags of blood oranges.” The queen sighed. “Regular oranges symbolize the death of Christ. Blood oranges symbolize the rise of the new ruler, the one who rules after Christ and will for thousands of years. Which, um, is me.”

“Okay.”

“I know how it sounds.”

“Okay.”

“Because first of all, gross, blood oranges? What scary-ass universe did those come from? And second, lame. And third, lame. But! That’s the newsletter story. And hey! I never did get those shoes back from you.”

“Sorry, I was busy with my first-ever kill.”

“Oh, jeez, Roberta!”

“Rachael.” It’s uncanny how the woman is so bad at names.

“Yeah, I know, I was just testing you. How long are you gonna flog that as an excuse? ‘Boo-hoo, I had to shed Pack blood in defense of my den, yadda-yadda.’ You’re lucky you broke her neck, because if she’d bled on those shoes, you and I would be having a very different conversation right now. You know, I got those at a sample sale? And normally I don’t like sample sales, because I think it sets up an unfair advantage . . .”

This woman is either brilliant or deranged. And either way, she’s got good people, which for a leader is more than half the battle.

Brilliant.

“—like anyone could just pop into the store and buy them straight off the rack like that! ‘No way,’ I said. You can’t—”

No. Deranged.

“—get outta town with that shit! Of course, he got all kinds of pissy when I knocked him off the roof. He only fell six stories and the parking ramp broke his fall, so I don’t—”

No. Brilliant.